Yesterday is History: a love triangle through the decades!

 

Hello and welcome to this post about Yesterday is History by Kosoko Jackson. I ended up picking this one up because I’ve read a bunch of other books also by Kosoko Jackson and, I’ll be honest, since I forget most of the books I read after I read them, I remember them to varying degrees, but it just made sense for me to read this one next.

The blurb says that Andre Cobb is about to be in the most confusing love triangles of all time. Andre’s life just got interesting. After receiving a much-needed liver transplant, he’s ready for everything that comes next. But what he doesn’t expect is for his new liver to have some interesting side-effects – mainly the ability to time travel. A few weeks after the transplant, he passes out and wakes up in 1969, where he connects with a magnetic boy named Michael. Michael is everything Andre wishes he could be: creative, passionate, and carefree. And even though none of what’s happening to him makes sense, Andre knows he’s drawn to Michael in a way he’s never felt before. In the present day, Andre learns his donor comes from a family of time travellers. And they’ve tasked their youngest son, Blake, with teaching Andre how to use his unexpected gift. Blake is still angry and reeling from the death of his brother, but he and Andre forge a connection after spending hours together, all while fighting their growing attraction to each other. Torn between two boys, one in the past and one in the present, Andre has to figure out where he belongs – and, more importantly, who he wants to be – before the consequences of jumping in time catch up to him and change his future for good.

My presumption before reading the book was that since Andre needs to figure out who he wants to be, he was going to do one of two things. The first is end up with neither of the boys, because he needs to be alone, or that he was going to choose Blake. And I say that because he can be with Blake after Michael helps him come into his own. Like, Michael was going to help him realise who he wants to be, and then in doing that, he can come to terms with wanting to be with Blake.

The book opens on Andre in hospital, he’s recovering from the surgery that gave him his new liver, and he points out to the reader that something feels off inside of him. He also ends up getting an email from his school that basically says that since he’s taken so much time off due to his cancer, he can’t graduate with the rest of his class, and his bestie, Isobel. He ends up going to bed and being shocked back away, touching grass, after he wished that he could go back in time, ironically. This blond boy finds him when he’s in the garden of his own house like 50 years in the past when the blond boy, Michael, who lives there, invites him in, thinking he’s kind of going through something. And then Andre zoops back to his own room after almost kissing Michael. And after doing this the mother of the boy whose liver Andre ended up with calls Andre to invite him over because they need to talk, and obviously, Andre ends up going. Then while he’s over there he gets told that he is now a time traveller, because the boy’s mum and husband also are.

Conceptually this book was so fun. Like what do you mean it’s a time travel against the main character’s will romance? And between the two boys, Blake, the time travellers’ son, he had a very much enemies to lovers kind of vibe with Andre because he’s mad that Andre has his brother’s liver. Then Michael is wild, a random boy turns up in his front garden, then again in his house, and his choice is to just start flirting with him? Wild.

There’s one bit, quite early on, where Andre states to the reader that he’s been blowing off Isobel to go be with Blake – because obviously to us, Andre is learning about his new time travel ability – and he can’t exactly tell Isobel that, because she’s going to think he’s just lying to her to spend time with a boy. It’s one of those things that I could more or less tell this was going to be a form of conflict unless Andre was somehow able to prove to her he could time travel. But the thing is, I feel like it never did. It was mentioned in the one bit, but then nothing ever came of it. Now I'm in two minds about this, the first is why didn't Jackson do anything with it? But then the second is that it doesn't really matter, because since the book is more about Andre jumping through time and the romance, Isobel isn't really of any consequence to the plot in the first place, so it's one of those things that doesn't matter. It just felt odd to set it up and then just not do it is all.

This book felt like it went by really quick while I was reading it. I don’t know what it was, but I felt like it also took me ages to actually read it, but when I actually sat down to read it, I realised it was one of those things where I was reading a bunch all at once, and actually getting through it quite fast. And I feel like it was easy to read – even with some of the heavier themes surrounding Blake specifically – I did occasionally find myself wanting for more, because I am in fact greedy and love content. However, this does lead to my next point.

I felt like there could have been more to this book. Like, whenever Andre went to the past, it was only wherever Michael was. However, when he’s training his abilities with Blake, there’s one point where he says he went to the Titanic in 1912, but he just comes back wet, and that’s it. We never see anything other than when he sees Michael in the past. And even as I’m writing this, I know it’s also something that I’ve been guilty of in the work in progress I’m working on at the moment, there’s this big concept we have in the story, but they’re not all that present. They’re just like something that’s just there. In this book, Andre spends time with Blake, then hops and spends time with Michael, then hops back. This book is only 300 pages, but I do think it could have easily been another 100 that could have let it explore (figuratively and literally) the time travel a bit more. And while this is a criticism I do have, I will say, there’s one moment between Andre and Blake’s mum, that does involve the both of them time travelling to one spot that I really did think was sweet, because I think it did such a good job of humanising Blake’s mum.

I think as characters, I liked Andre in the fact that even though he had taken someone’s liver and managed to get a new life after going through cancer, he still felt the need to live for other people, and not himself. His plan is to go to college to do what his parents want him to do, rather than what he wants to do. And then it’s Michael, when he hops back in time, that challenges those beliefs and gets him to admit to himself that he doesn’t actually want to be a doctor like his parents want. I will criticise Andre from a personal perspective, however. He has strong feelings for Michael, which I can understand, since he’s such a force of nature and not used to someone like him. But Andre, after one argument with Blake thinks that he just wants to go back and spend his life with Michael when he’s barely spent a cumulative total of maybe three days with him. I understand Andre is a teenager, but that was so dramatic of him.

Overall, I will absolutely read this book again, I really did enjoy it, and I’d definitely recommend giving it a read. I think either this, or A Dash of Salt and Pepper, are probably my favourites from Jackson. I do just ultimately wished that this book was longer, so that, like I said, let it explore not only the time travel, but the relationships Andre had as well a little more.

Okay, bye!